Thoughts on legalism

The past two weeks, I had encounters on and about legalism. Here’re what I observed: (I know about this long before, it’s just going back to me now)

1. With legalism, the BUT always comes after the good news. With the gospel, the BUT comes after the bad news. The gospel tells us that we are hopeless BUT Jesus came to save us. Legalism on the other hand says, yes Jesus died for you BUT you need to keep the law to be saved. :D Funny, eh?

2. “Legalists don’t dismiss Christ. They trust in Christ a lot. But they don’t trust in Christ alone.” (Max Lucado, It’s not about me, p. 114) True enough, legalists look real religious. In fact, they are the most religious people I’ve ever known. Unfortunately, that religousity makes them trust not on Jesus alone but sadly, to their own efforts of obeying the law.

3. Legalism is addicting. And just like an addictive substance, it kills your judgement. I have a friend who’s wife is an inactive Adventist. Take note of the underlined word. Inactive means she’s already working on Sabbath (Saturday) and probably not even going to church on Vespers (Friday). She said she already accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. But in the midst of this, she still feel guilty for not being able to observe the Sabbath. The “hook” is still present. I’ve known of a lot of former Adventists not joining other Christian groups because they would like to worship “only on a Sabbath”. It’s Sabbath, nothing else. Where is Jesus in the picture, you may ask. Oh well, he’s sitting right there in the corner because for most of them, the law, or in this case, the Sabbath is the center of their Christian experience.

Sad, but it’s happening. Ironically, here’s an excellent article from Adventist Review on legalism. Doctrinal differences aside, I recommend this article to everyone who feels legalism is eating them.

Thoughts on Calvinism’s loophole

I was chatting with a couple of Berean friends at Starbucks Tektite Tower last night when this thought came to me.

(Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be an expert of Calvinism. I’m simply trying to bounce off a thought that made sense to where I am coming from. I just think this will make sense to some, too)

Calvinists rise and fall on what they perceive as the sovereignty of God as far as the human being’s salvation is concerned. I read somewhere that Calvin’s dilemma was to reconcile how a God who is sovereign would not succeed in saving someone he intends to save. Therefore, he said:
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My wife is an open theist!

For those of you who have been visiting this blog, you’ll notice that I’ve been very interested with Open Theism, has read a book “God of the Possible” by Greg Boyd and followed a Calvinism vs. Open Theism debate.

Here’s something interesting.

My wife, who’s a relatively new Christian, and I just had our call-it-a-day chat. We were talking about a friend whose daugther got pregnant at a very young age. At church this morning, Kuya Prudy talked about the ministry that God has called us to do thru our SHAPE, and that he said we are not an accident, God has us in mind even before we were born.

She commented, “I don’t think God planned that the girl will commit that mistake and be pregnant at this very age. That’s entirely her choice. But I think God did have a plan in case the girl commits a mistake, the baby is already in God’s mind. That’s why I also believe that the baby is not an accident.”

Very profound. Very Open Theist. :D Who says Classical Theism is the “default” theology for new Christians?

Universal Forgiveness and Evangelism

Ernest Hemingway wrote a story about a father and his teenage son. In the story, the relationship had become somewhat strained, and the teenage son ran away from home. His father began a journey in search of that rebellious son.

Finally, in Madrid, Spain, in a last desperate attempt to find the boy, the father put an ad in the local newspaper. The ad read: “Dear Paco, Meet me in front of the newspaper office at noon. All is forgiven. I love you. Your father.” The next day, in front of the newspaper office, eight hundred Pacos showed up. They were all seeking forgiveness. They were all seeking the love of their father.

This is where the importance of Universal Forgiveness doctrine comes in. I believe that everyone is a “Paco”. They don’t know how but they long to experience the forgiveness of God. They can only experience it if they recognize a loving God. They now have all the reason to come home because their sins have been forgiven. Why would someone go back home if they know there’s an angry father ready to give punishment for their sins? Or if ever they come home and abled to convince the father to forgiven them because they repented, who should take the credit for the successful restoration of relationship? Could it be the sinner because he repented?

On the other hand, since God has forgiven everyone of all their sins, when one comes home the Father gets all the credit for performing the act of forgiving while we were yet sinners, even before we come home.

Questions on Universal Justification

Here’s my thesis:

Christ’s death on the cross paid all types of sins, of all types of men, for all times. Justification is God declaring a person not-guilty, therefore since Christ paid for all sins of all men for all times, from God’s perspective, all men are justified, thus forgiven from all their sins. This is universal, objective justification. On the other hand, the forgiveness freely given by God to men has to be received or rejected. Once received, the universally given forgiveness comes alive in a person. He experienced being born-again, therefore saved. This explains why justification is NOT God changing his heart towards man, rather justification is God loving all men thru the death of Jesus THEN when received changes man’s heart.

At thebereans.net forum, we’ve been discussing this. There are, of course, questions that are coming up. One of which is this:

I tried, but I failed to see how justification in Rom 8:30 and 1Jn1:9 can be considered “experiential” from the plain reading for the text. I think that one would only arrive at that interpretation if he/she had a prior point of view, like UJ, and used that to interpret the “justification” mentioned in those text. If that’s the case, and I’m not saying you’ve done that intentionally but I know people do that unconsciously, then I believe the interpretation is invalid.

Let me start with how we treat the doctrine of the Trinity. As Trinitarians, we all agree that there is no direct mention of that doctrine in the Bible. We have to make an assertion to come up with that doctrine. We can see in the Bible that the Father is God. But there are also texts that says Jesus is God, same goes with the Holy Spirit. And the Bible is clear that there is only ONE God. Therefore, we say these are ALL CORRECT, we all have to come into a conclusion that all 3 are Gods yet they are one. It is an assertion, not a direct quote from the Bible. And yes, it IS illogical as far as our human minds are concerned. (The tritheists and modalists wants to arrive at a logical conclusion, that’s why they swayed). Nonetheless, we accept it because the Bible speaks for it.

Now, let me be clear that I’m not trying to equate the gravity of the doctrine of the Trinity with the doctrine of Universal Justification. I’m just trying to make an example of how we can accept what the whole Bible says and see how seemingly like contradicting verses can all be true in all it’s essence.

I’m aware that there are verses in the Bible that implies that one is forgiven or justified only after they believe or asks for it (e.g, Rom 8:30 and 1 Jn 1:9). On the other hand, there are also some verses that says otherwise:

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